It is another awesome Friday and once again we are here reading. I hope you are doing well, dear reader.
I have said this a number of times but I don't think it will hurt if I repeat it. I always thought it was difficult to ethically balance my writing and my work. In that sense, I initially thought that it was better to avoid throwing my work into my freelance writing projects, be it for my blog or other publications. That was in my graduate sppp0chool days but working in a busy tertiary public hospital has seen me have a change of heart and deciding to use my writing as a health promotion tool.
A number of weeks ago (I am not good at time-tracking my articles) I wrote an article titled Population Watch and it was based on my experience in the Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing. It was a derivative of what was supposed to be a "feel-my-pain" article about how busy work has been in recent months but I decided to word in a positive way to disseminate the message of family planning and contraception. It was very interesting to see that the article got a positive reception from people including one Thokozani Mbendera who happens to be the President of Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM). He, in turn, asked for my permission for publishing the article on the FPAM website, a request to which I said yes. I am not sure if that article was published but I would like to think that I added a relatively neutral voice to the family planning gospel. I do hope that the shout will fall on the right ears and that the message will be applied. Hopefully these writings will make a difference in the lives of few.
I will start today's party (or noise) with the same issue of the population and women's health. I am not sure as to what the problem is but the rate at which our women are getting pregnant and delivering babies is rather worrying and counterproductive. It is interesting to note that in this day and age we still have women who bear children with hardly any gap. On the other hand, there are still women who tell straight in the face that they would like to have four or five children despite having no sustainable source of income for the family. Some of you might find my line of argument faulty but the fact remains that raising a child is expensive for the parent, society and the nation. I personally am of the idea that children deserve the best of parental care, a greater element of which involves a robust financial input. The current situation? We have a population that is outgrowing the space and resources at all levels. That calls for action, right? We all need to slow down.
I know this may sound weird but on Tuesday I found myself asking workmates whether it was possible to introduce a limit as to the number of children one can have. It might be a far fetched idea, but that might just be the way out of some of the troubles we have as a nation. I couldn't be that wrong on this one.
I probably have never mentioned this but I have at some point "played the guest" on some Whatsapp groups tp which I was invited to shed more light on some health issues. I must say it is a hectic hectic task to be answering questions on different issues in a 200 member strong Whatsapp group. This is because the questions are usually too many for proper and elaborate answers and in some cases the questions tend to overly lean towards sexual health. Infertility sinkhani yomafunsana on a Health Q and A, in my view. That being said, the other thing I have learnt through these chats is that people do not have much knowledge on one of the most serious killers in this country; cervical cancer.
I have not been around issues of women's health for too long. After my graduation, I ended up doing my clinical internships in the departments of Paediatrics, Adult Medicine and then Surgery before being switched to Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing where I am barely 5 months old. Here is where I am having a hands on and practical exposure to issues of women's health and one of the sad realities is that cervical cancer remains the disease that is claiming a lot of lives in as far as women are concerned despite the availability of screening for the same.
Cervical cancer, which is the commonest cancer in women in Malawi is caused by uncontrolled infections with Human Papilloma viruses. This virus is sexually transmitted and with untreated and uncontrolled infections, there is an abnormal growth of ma cells a pa khomo la chiberekero... Boom! Cancer. Despite the fact that this disease can affect any woman, there is a higher risk in those whose immune systems are impaired, like those who are HIV positive. Like every cancer, the disease can spread to and damage other organs like kidneys, the liver and the brain, leading to a slow death.
Having fed on a few morsels of knowledge on the progression of the disease, I strongly think that this shouldn't be the commonest cancer there is in Malawi. The reason is that it is something that develops ober years and with the availability of screening for the disease, there is a high chance of catching it early and treating it before spreads to other organs, a situation which limits treatment options. This brings me to the point of the day. We need to get our women screened for early diagnosis and treatment should they have the disease. I will not even talk about the signs and symptoms of the disease because by the time symptoms get to that level, the disease is usually advanced.
What is your assignment, then? All of you who have read this article need to get screened or to tell your spouses, mothers, grannies and aunties to get screened. The whole process would take about 5 minutes minus the waiting time and it hardly has any adverse effect beyond the minor discomfort you get while people are at it. Tamvana apa, I hope.
Perhaps another proxy around these issues would be the promotion of education. If you think of it, educations doesn't have much of a complicated effect. If someone is in school, they are obviously not busy bearing children at 17 years of age. If someone is in school, they realize the importance of family planning. If someone is lost in school, they hardly have time for having 9 children as they are busy chasing a PhD and postdoctoral fellowships. Something to think about.
We could talk about a whole lot of health topics through the blog. I, on the other hand feel like there are no grounds for writing about malaria when there is hardly anything that a malaria article can change. I mean... there isn't that much of a knowledge gap and a long article on the disease would only deprive us of a feel my pain, typical personalized Richie Online article. This article is a call to action and I hope it will be treated as such.
I am pretty sure that my dear readers have had an experience with some Land Rover Defender cars which have megaphones, going around locations and disseminating various messages; call to kanema wa Ambuye Yesu, warnings about water disconnection, agricultural fairs and all that stuff. Perhaps there are some which go out to do some health promotion by preaching about healthy living. If I had one of those, the content of this article would be my message. We need to slow down on the reproduction end and our women need to get screened for cervical cancer before it is too late. Sadly, I have no Land Rover Defender with a megaphone on top, but on the positive side I have a blog with an audience. This is my megaphone. Let the sound of health promotion fall on compliant ears.
By the way. Did Goodall Gondwe just (indirectly) call us fetuses?
Friday, 13 April 2018
Friday, 6 April 2018
The Art of the Chat
It is a Friday and once again we have this opportunity to read a fresh article.
I hope I have your forgiveness for what happened last week. Somehow, the Richie Online Team managed to fail to give you a fresh article. I am pretty sure that some good came out of that, though. I got a few positive comments from people who were blessed with the sermon by Reverend Richard Jean-Baptiste Kamwezi. A couple of souls saved. How glorious!
The art of the chat. Some of you might be asking as to whether such a thing exists. It probably doesn’t. The fancy title was a simple attempt at making things sound poetic when they are not. I could have named this article, “How to Chat with People” or anything along those lines. I am pretty sure that none of the Richie Online readers would have opened the article if that was the case, though.
Having said that, perhaps some would still be wondering as to why we are talking about this. Those that have related with me personally do understand that I am very particular about the way I talk to and relate with different people. Everything about my interpersonal relationships is customized to the needs of that friendship and it is some sort of an obsession, as some would call it. Interestingly enough, this element of handling conversations and relationships in a tailor made manner seems to be lacking among modern day humans. Quick example? I got one for you.
In the month of June in the year of Liberals, 2017, I had the honor of being the keynote speaker at the graduation of Form Four students at St Patrick’s Secondary school. Those who were at the event report that I gave a powerful and inspiring speech. I am not sure if I did and that is besides the point but one thing I am sure of is that for some reason a good proportion of the student population loved it and some of them were all over me, asking for my contact numbers as I was leaving the place. My response? “I am not good at picking calls and if you want to reach me you are better off finding me on the social media.”
A couple of days later I got a friend request on Facebook from one Owen Chisale. This kid wanted to pursue a career in medicine and he thought I could give him a head start. He made his intentions clear and we started a fruitful conversation. I am glad to report that the kid is on his way to the College of Medicine but this is not the one I wanted to tell you about. The one I want to tell you about sent a request about a month ago and instead of a proper introduction he started by joking about the things I said in my speech at his graduation and laughing about it (that annoying "kkkk"); all in one text. That did not go well with me and we never got to start a conversation. He probably did not want any wisdom or something like that. He probably just wanted a casual chat but his introduction did not work magic for him.
The Facebook messages from the two young men bring us to the first major lesson in the art of the chat; know your audience. People are different and there are many different things that will make things work when starting or maintaining a chat depending on who you are dealing with at that particular moment. This may sound a bit obvious but I will still say it. You cannot chat with your pastor in the same way that you chat with your football buddies or other people you do weekend chillings with. Even in the setting where someone is both a friend and a boss, lines need to be drawn depending on the context and setting. This is one basic rule but it is one that is usually not observed by many.
Closely related to knowing the audience is the rule of appealing to the audience. You do not just have to know who you are dealing with and relate with them as you think they please. You have to take a step further and understand how they like to do things and how they possibly would like to converse and relate with you. I probably alluded to this in my “untapped resource called a friend” article but I will expound it in case I didn’t. It is important to take an interest in how people who matter like to have their friendship packages are handed to them. I will put myself as an example here. I do not like phone calls so I hardly make any. I miss a lot of my calls and that is because I do not pay attention as much attention to my phone dialer as much as I do to my Whatsapp texts or Facebook notifications. The people I call my good friends have realized this and they play ball accordingly. Even when texting, there is a certain way in which I want my texts to come from which group of people. Simple example? I find it absurd when someone wishes me a lovely night without a prior conversation in the day. With time, I have learnt to tolerate such messages and let them slide without throwing a tantrum, but the truth remains that I do not like them.
The fact remains that there will be some conversations that will require some degree of seriousness and some that will require more of the opposite. It is not good to put people off with our lack of seriousness when we can hold it together around them for that moment and it is not good to scare people with grumpy moods when they could use a chilled version of us. Tikumakanika kupeza nazo ntchito ndi mabanja zimenezi.
Perhaps we also need to learn to pay attention to the way we address people. Some people are our bosses but they do not like being addressed as such in the same way some enjoy being called uncles despite having no blood relations with our parents. There will be those who will not tolerate being called by their first name just because they are 25 or because they got an early twin pregnancy which earned them the title “make tiwiri”. Recognize and respect that. It is all important. If your boyfriend wants you to call him bro, who are you to say no? There will be some people who will introduce you as their ex-lover when you do not remember dating them, of course. Zinazi kumangozitaya.
Last but not least, the importance of drawing lines cannot be overemphasized in the art of the chat. There are some things that are best said only in closed places and around certain people. I personally do not like it when people bring issues that apply to a particular sect of people on a group chat. Basi.. anthu mukucheza bwinobwino and all of the sudden someone brings up their work stuff and starts talking about how tough or entertaining their boss is. The worst is when people unreasonably bring up religion and spark unnecessary debates on an otherwise secular chat. Useless. And can I say this thing that speaking in Tumbuka or Yao when half the people are a mixture of Chewas and Lhomwes (who sadly do not know their language) is a sing punishable by stoning?
On the same issue of drawing lines, some of the things we do and say behind closed doors shouldn’t be brought out in the open. Mudzatikwapulitsa kwa makolo and you may end up having us excommunicated from the Holy Roman Catholic church. Mongonenapo.
This is one long article which has a lot of seemingly obvious insights, but I am sure it has something to offer as we maximize the gains from friendships through the active management of the art of the chat.
I hope I have your forgiveness for what happened last week. Somehow, the Richie Online Team managed to fail to give you a fresh article. I am pretty sure that some good came out of that, though. I got a few positive comments from people who were blessed with the sermon by Reverend Richard Jean-Baptiste Kamwezi. A couple of souls saved. How glorious!
The art of the chat. Some of you might be asking as to whether such a thing exists. It probably doesn’t. The fancy title was a simple attempt at making things sound poetic when they are not. I could have named this article, “How to Chat with People” or anything along those lines. I am pretty sure that none of the Richie Online readers would have opened the article if that was the case, though.
Having said that, perhaps some would still be wondering as to why we are talking about this. Those that have related with me personally do understand that I am very particular about the way I talk to and relate with different people. Everything about my interpersonal relationships is customized to the needs of that friendship and it is some sort of an obsession, as some would call it. Interestingly enough, this element of handling conversations and relationships in a tailor made manner seems to be lacking among modern day humans. Quick example? I got one for you.
In the month of June in the year of Liberals, 2017, I had the honor of being the keynote speaker at the graduation of Form Four students at St Patrick’s Secondary school. Those who were at the event report that I gave a powerful and inspiring speech. I am not sure if I did and that is besides the point but one thing I am sure of is that for some reason a good proportion of the student population loved it and some of them were all over me, asking for my contact numbers as I was leaving the place. My response? “I am not good at picking calls and if you want to reach me you are better off finding me on the social media.”
A couple of days later I got a friend request on Facebook from one Owen Chisale. This kid wanted to pursue a career in medicine and he thought I could give him a head start. He made his intentions clear and we started a fruitful conversation. I am glad to report that the kid is on his way to the College of Medicine but this is not the one I wanted to tell you about. The one I want to tell you about sent a request about a month ago and instead of a proper introduction he started by joking about the things I said in my speech at his graduation and laughing about it (that annoying "kkkk"); all in one text. That did not go well with me and we never got to start a conversation. He probably did not want any wisdom or something like that. He probably just wanted a casual chat but his introduction did not work magic for him.
The Facebook messages from the two young men bring us to the first major lesson in the art of the chat; know your audience. People are different and there are many different things that will make things work when starting or maintaining a chat depending on who you are dealing with at that particular moment. This may sound a bit obvious but I will still say it. You cannot chat with your pastor in the same way that you chat with your football buddies or other people you do weekend chillings with. Even in the setting where someone is both a friend and a boss, lines need to be drawn depending on the context and setting. This is one basic rule but it is one that is usually not observed by many.
Closely related to knowing the audience is the rule of appealing to the audience. You do not just have to know who you are dealing with and relate with them as you think they please. You have to take a step further and understand how they like to do things and how they possibly would like to converse and relate with you. I probably alluded to this in my “untapped resource called a friend” article but I will expound it in case I didn’t. It is important to take an interest in how people who matter like to have their friendship packages are handed to them. I will put myself as an example here. I do not like phone calls so I hardly make any. I miss a lot of my calls and that is because I do not pay attention as much attention to my phone dialer as much as I do to my Whatsapp texts or Facebook notifications. The people I call my good friends have realized this and they play ball accordingly. Even when texting, there is a certain way in which I want my texts to come from which group of people. Simple example? I find it absurd when someone wishes me a lovely night without a prior conversation in the day. With time, I have learnt to tolerate such messages and let them slide without throwing a tantrum, but the truth remains that I do not like them.
The fact remains that there will be some conversations that will require some degree of seriousness and some that will require more of the opposite. It is not good to put people off with our lack of seriousness when we can hold it together around them for that moment and it is not good to scare people with grumpy moods when they could use a chilled version of us. Tikumakanika kupeza nazo ntchito ndi mabanja zimenezi.
Perhaps we also need to learn to pay attention to the way we address people. Some people are our bosses but they do not like being addressed as such in the same way some enjoy being called uncles despite having no blood relations with our parents. There will be those who will not tolerate being called by their first name just because they are 25 or because they got an early twin pregnancy which earned them the title “make tiwiri”. Recognize and respect that. It is all important. If your boyfriend wants you to call him bro, who are you to say no? There will be some people who will introduce you as their ex-lover when you do not remember dating them, of course. Zinazi kumangozitaya.
Last but not least, the importance of drawing lines cannot be overemphasized in the art of the chat. There are some things that are best said only in closed places and around certain people. I personally do not like it when people bring issues that apply to a particular sect of people on a group chat. Basi.. anthu mukucheza bwinobwino and all of the sudden someone brings up their work stuff and starts talking about how tough or entertaining their boss is. The worst is when people unreasonably bring up religion and spark unnecessary debates on an otherwise secular chat. Useless. And can I say this thing that speaking in Tumbuka or Yao when half the people are a mixture of Chewas and Lhomwes (who sadly do not know their language) is a sing punishable by stoning?
On the same issue of drawing lines, some of the things we do and say behind closed doors shouldn’t be brought out in the open. Mudzatikwapulitsa kwa makolo and you may end up having us excommunicated from the Holy Roman Catholic church. Mongonenapo.
This is one long article which has a lot of seemingly obvious insights, but I am sure it has something to offer as we maximize the gains from friendships through the active management of the art of the chat.
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